Enemy Dearest

“You’re doing the lord’s work.” I place my palms in a prayer position. “Saint Gannon.”

My brother opens his smart mouth to respond, only to have his thunder stolen by our weekend housekeeper, Clarice. Gazing down, she toddles to the pool with a dust pan and broom in hand.

“Good morning,” she says, crouching to sweep up my mess. Her knees crack and she stifles a moan as she bends. She’s way too fucking old for this shit, but she’s loyal and efficient so my father will keep her on until her dying day.

Once upon a time, she was our full-time grounds manager with a staff of fourteen hand-picked souls, but time caught up with her, as it does, and my father chose to keep her on weekends rather than put her out to pasture.

No one’s ever accused Vincent Monreaux of having a soft spot, but he’s good to those who are good to him.

Gannon pinches the bridge of his nose, giving me side-eye while Clarice does my dirty work.

I exhale. “Clarice, you don’t have to do that. I’ve got it.”

All of this fanfare over one fucking broken beer bottle—and none of this would’ve happened if it weren’t for the naked chick swimming in my pool last night.

At first, I thought I was hallucinating. I’d had a few beers and I was heading back for more when I heard the splash outside. I shoved the living room curtains apart and peered toward the pool, which was pitch dark except for the faint glow of moonlight on the rippling water … water that should have been still.

And then I saw her. Floating. Peaceful. Oblivious. Naked.

Clearly deranged.

Possibly high on drugs for all I knew.

Or dead.

I’ve never fashioned myself a hero by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t preparing myself to fish a lifeless body out of the pool. But by the time I got out there, she was hiding in the grotto—like I wouldn’t fucking find her.

Her clothes and sandals lay in a crumpled pile on a chair, and I yelled for her to show herself. When she finally emerged, it took all of two seconds for me to recognize that face.

She was a Rose.

Sheridan Rose, to be exact.

A vile, disgusting … beautiful … Rose.

I didn’t know her, but I knew all about her—and her parents. So I’d kept a poker face and played dumb. I’d seen outdated pictures of her family before, from archived news articles. And I knew she’d dated a guy from my high school a couple years back. In tagged photos on social media, I’d studied her heart-shaped face for more hours than I’d ever admit to anyone … because she wasn’t just gorgeous, she was forbidden—and that made her unlike the rest.

For as long as I can remember, my father has been obsessed with the Roses and avenging the smear campaign they’d launched against him, his reputation, his business, and our family name a lifetime ago.

We’d almost lost everything because of them.

Not to mention my mother’s death suspiciously occurred a block from their house, and the bastard who struck her and drove off was never found. To make matters worse, not only was my mother’s life taken that day, but so was the life of my baby sister. Mom was twenty-two weeks along, carrying the little girl they’d so badly yearned for. A “sweet little angel” to round out our perfect family, as my father stated in a camera interview once.

Without warning, nearly everything my father had ever wanted was taken from him.

Forever.

He almost had it all.

To this day, my father is convinced it was one of the Roses. Someone who saw an opportunity and seized it. Someone with good reason to want to inflict the worst kind of pain and loss onto a Monreaux.

Someone like Rich Rose.

Last night, like a true coward and in true Rose fashion, the naked girl ran off before she had a chance to pay her penance. Like she could just wander in here and walk off like nothing happened …

And then she had the audacity to ignore me when I called after her—that’s when I smashed the beer bottle.

All I could think about was how the spawn of the family that destroyed mine dared to waltz her perfect peach-shaped ass onto our property like she owned the place.

The fucking nerve of that woman.

Clarice sweeps up the last fragment of glass, and Gannon heads into the house without a word—thank God. I wait until they’re both out of sight before fishing my dead phone from the deep end with a leaf skimmer, and then I make my way inside to clean up. Not because Gannon told me to, but because I can’t stop picturing the Rose girl’s ripe tits and pouty mouth and I need to get my head straight with an ice-cold shower.